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Comment by carabiner | Hacker News Reader

Because men are bullied when they ask for it. This is what Brene Brown found:

> Here’s the painful pattern that emerged from my research with men: We ask them to be vulnerable, we beg them to let us in, and we plead with them to tell us when they’re afraid, but the truth is that most women can’t stomach it. In those moments when real vulnerability happens in men, most of us recoil with fear and that fear manifests as everything from disappointment to disgust.

I've experienced this firsthand, and I think most men have, with their girlfriend or wife (or even mother or sister). Your value as a male romantic partner relies on you being that "rock," and anything to dispel that notion makes your value plummet. Women, even Margaret Atwood-quoting feminists like my ex, are repulsed by male vulnerability.

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If you act your gender, age and confident you'll be better off in most scenarios.

That may sound like a strange statement, but our programming is strong and no matter how much we debate it in the society it doesn't change. We are what we are. We may be able to evolve, but you can't snap your fingers and have that happen in a century. Arguably, I don't see us evolving past it either, as our programming likely gives us some advantage in reproduction.

In terms of "helping men" I used to work with troubled youth (13-17yrs); young men need role models and a place in society. They'll ask for help and the role models can help them. They do much better in apprenticeship type roles. I don't really think it can be force, but a bit of encouragement and guidance goes a LONG way.

Today our society coddles everyone, young men need responsibility, guidance and hard work. Everyone has the desire to be respected, show them how to fit into society and be respected and they'll follow your lead. Many of the issues we face in society today is we don't have high expectations coupled with mentorship. Sports do this to a degree, but it needs to be through all walks of life.

The main issue IMO is that we have removed male and female only spaces and are attempting to homogenize. We also coddle children and young adults to the point they are offended when someone uses their wrong pronoun. It's good to have roles in society it helps optimize and provides guidance to those who need it. It's also good to have a thick skin, so you can roll with the punches and still succeed. Men and women alike are attracted to the traditional roles of the opposite gender because it helps both partner. There's a good reason for that, historically and today. That's not to say other configurations aren't possible, but biologically, societally and economically the traditional roles make sense to most people internally.

Most people aren't offended when someone accidently uses the wrong pronoun. They do get offended when people purposefully use the wrong pronoun to intentionally offend. Pretending that those are the same thing is part of the problem.

Many people feign offense at benign things to gain power over others.

I have experienced this too.

People will play on social cues to gain benefit, it doesn't matter which social cue.

The idea that every person with non-standard pronouns is a good person is misguided, even if it was an overwhelming majority.

The capacity for self-centeredness and/or bullying behaviour exists in all demographics.

Everyone is out to benefit themselves and those they like no matter the consequences for others. People ignore that at their own peril.

That’s reductionist.

All people have morals; the ones to be fearful of are the ones that allow their morality to bend depending on the recipient.

Its a hueristic, its quite literally wrong but it is a quick and useful guide.

Useful in some contexts, disastrous in others. The challenge with all heuristics is having the wisdom to know when to apply them.

I think the self interest heuristic is generally overused.

I guess I disagree, self interest is generally underestimated to disastrous result. The reason being that if you assume someone is out only for themselves and are wrong you lose very little. If you assume the opposite wrongly it is very costly.

The way I see it we are fundamentally the same species which committed all of the atrocities of the 20th century, 19th century, heck all of the extremely violent and callous behavior in recorded history. To believe that human nature has changed much from that in only the span of a few decades is foolhardy.

it's not that simple. if i just assume that someone is out for themselves, and as a result i reject or ignore them then i'll never find any friends.

so i need to assume that most people are not just out for themselves and engage others hoping that they are not, but maybe just be cautious until i know them better.

How many wars and atrocities of the 20th century were caused by this heuristic as well?

If you assume most people are out for themselves, the rational solution is usually to violently suppress or exterminate your opposition whenever possible. Kill them before they have a chance to kill you.

Nope. Sociopaths don’t have morals. And most people will do immoral things if the value/cost is high enough.

After all that he said, this is what you decided to comment on? I guess he was right on the money.

"he" - quite an assumption :)

Yea, I was feeling a bit rebellious.

> They do get offended when people purposefully use the wrong pronoun to intentionally offend. Pretending that those are the same thing is part of the problem.

"the problem"...

You don't get to choose what other people call you. Confident, hardworking people, don't don't care what others call them. "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" is a common phrase school children say. I've been called a plethora of names, that doesn't define me, why let others define you (so to speak)?

This is exactly the coddling I was discussing.

The purpose of pronouns are to help others understand who you're talking about. It's not to validate the individual being discussed. Confident people don't need validation.

In some sense I agree. But on the other hand I also don't think we should be OK with rampant bullying. Many lives have been lost just because a group of people determined they want to bullying someone.

“You don’t get to choose what other people call you”

What? That’s literally the definition of a legal name change, which happens all the time. If someone continued to, intentionally, refer to my wife’s maiden name after she went through the nightmare process of changing it, you can bet she’d be offended, and rightfully so. Being offended by behaviour being done specifically to offend isn’t being coddled or a sign of weakness, and it’s frankly kind of weird that you think it is.

Sure, she can’t technically “choose” if someone continues to be a jerk and call her by the wrong name, but the social convention of respecting given names has existed forever, and extending that same logic to pronouns seems like a pretty fair expectation of basic human decency to me.

You’re seriously saying that if everyone around you referred to you as “miss” or “ma’am”, forever, that wouldn’t start to get to you? (I’m assuming you’re male, I find it hard to believe a woman would have written this) I’ll believe it when I see it. I’ve met plenty of men who like to think they’re that confident, but yet to meet a man who actually is.

>>What? That’s literally the definition of a legal name change, which happens all the time.

No, that is choosing what the GOVERNMENT calls you, largely for the purpose of ensuring they can extract a large portion of the labor for redistribution.

There is nothing requiring me or any other person from using your legal name, and in fact in some situations today using a persons legal name would be met with outrage and offense (i.e dead naming)

>If someone continued to, intentionally, .... you can bet she’d be offended

Seems like an odd thing to be offended over, maybe annoyed, or even feel disrespected. Offended nah... My first name has a commonly used short name that I dislike, people use it for me all the time but I am not offended by it it is just annoying

>extending that same logic to pronouns seems like a pretty fair expectation of basic human decency to me.

One big difference in language is pronouns are not directed at the target of their use, where names are.

Normal use of pronouns is used when describing a person to a 3rd party. "Go find Jim, he has your report"

He/She etc are outward expressions of secondary sex characteristic to aid people in their observation of the world. to use a another example

"Go find Sam, she has your report", I would go looking for a human with outwardly female characteristic. where as "Go find Sam, he has your report" I would look for a human with male characteristic. "Go find Sam, they has your report" is not only grammatically incorrect, it gives no indication on the type of human I should be looking for so I would just go down the hallway yelling Sam at everyone

>You’re seriously saying that if everyone around you referred to you as “miss” or “ma’am”, forever, that wouldn’t start to get to you?

I have a problem if people refer to me as Sir but it has nothing to do with the gender. /s

>but yet to meet a man who actually is.

Nice to meet you. Call me Ma'am, I dont care. Call me asshole I dont care, call me anything you want except late for dinner

> Nice to meet you. Call me Ma'am, I dont care. Call me asshole I dont care, call me anything you want except late for dinner

I don't believe you. What if I called you Pedo?

That would be slightly different than mis-gerndering me, or calling me by the wrong name, or using a premarital name wouldnt it?

That would be accusing me of crime, and accusing me of victimization of others. These are actions that one would have to take.

That is a far different statement than simply calling someone the wrong name, pronoun, etc.

One could be arrested, jailed, fired, etc for being a "pedo", Referring to a "they" as "she" or "he" would not result in that person being arrested, jailed or fired. if anything today the person using the incorrect pronoun would have higher legal jeopardy than the person being "mis-gendered"

Calling someone Ma'am if they wanted Sir or vice versa is not going to result in the person the incorrect salutation was directed at being fired or jailed

Your "gotcha" is both insane and idiotic, raising to the level is disbelief anyone would even make that as a analog comparison

I capitalized it, meaning I would use it as your name, not an accusation.

> If someone continued to, intentionally, refer to my wife’s maiden name

My wife didn’t take my last name, 2 of her aunts keep intentionally sending cards and such, addressed only to her, with my last name. It’s been 13 years.

> "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me"

That does not make it true. It is also not great to put the onus on the victim of bullying.

As someone who was bullied quite severely, I always preferred a fist fight over words. Still do; feels more honest, less manipulative getting-in-your-head but more visceral and present. To each their own perhaps, underlining the fact that words can and perhaps should hurt as much as sticks and stones; if you think words mean something, well, then they mean something.

Confidence only gets you so far, there are no simple solutions. Any study on bullying will elucidate that fact.

I was severely bullied both verbally and physically. I would take verbally 10/10 times any day. Words hurt, but the fear of being severely physically hurt or accidentally killed is worse by miles.

Thanks for sharing. It's important to understand these experiences and coping mechanisms are highly personal. You can't bless one way of dealing with it over the others, because not everybody experiences it the same. Also, you only learn those things by experiencing them. I for instance appea to be fearless, but sensitive. I don't think me getting less sensitive is the answer, nor you sucking up your fear. The solution will be personal, but should involve us and bystanders to correct the bully, whether they throw punches or words.

> Confident, hardworking people, don't don't care what others call them. "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me"

Just naive. Like saying the bible or the koran is "just words" rather than the foundation of societies and the cause of wars.

> Like saying the bible or the koran is "just words" rather than the foundation of societies and the cause of wars.

It _is_ just a collection of words though, it's people that take it very seriously and get offended that start the wars. Had they learned this credo when they were young, they might not have escalated it to war. Anyone can just shout words out, you going to get offended at everyone ?

> You don't get to choose what other people call you. Confident, hardworking people, don't don't care what others call them.

What on Earth? Yes you do. Do you not tell people what your name is? When someone asks you for your name, what do you say? I don't understand how you have human conversations with other people and make this claim.

There's such a thing as respecting other peoples' preferences or quirks, even if you don't agree with them. I have friends who smoke, and no matter how much I think that smoking is outrageously dumb, I just accept that this is what they do - and the same applies to a whole range of other behaviours, too, such as religious or dietary preferences etc.

You don't have to have a particular stance on trans issues to have the common decency to use the correct pronoun. Mind you, I'm talking about reasonable things here: I am not necessarily sympathetic to wholly invented pronouns (because that doesn't come very naturally), although I think "they" is fine, and of course, it would be ridiculous if (hypothetically) a person switched pronouns every day, but in the cases I have experienced, someone communicates that they now identify as the other gender, and that's fine. Usually it's also accompanied by enough outwards changes that it's also not too hard to do; I've met trans men that I didn't know were not biological men at first.

So, idk, to me "please refer to me as man/woman in the future" sounds like a simple, easily satisfied request and getting worked up over it to me signals that one prefers emphasising their political opinion over just being decent and accomodating.

Same here. My wife calls herself a feminist. Yet, when I cried one time in front of her, instead of comforting me, she told me - stop crying, you are making me angry.

Another time, she told me that the only value I bring to her life is 'to provide for our kid until they turn adult'.

I don't think we will be together much longer lol.

Her treatment of you is absolutely disgusting. She should be told that in those terms, and you should demand an apology.

While I agree that nobody should have to put up with that sort of treatment, demanding an apology is not going to work. Couple's therapy might help if you manage to find a good one, but frankly chances are low and he should mentally prepare himself to move out and potentially fight for custody.

Or just accept that's his role as man, even though matte modern feminism tries to tell you otherwise

Some people might be happy with that role, and sure, if it works for them, great!

But I do think it's quite reasonable to expect more from life and relationships. Women tend to expect more, and society doesn't tell them not to.

It's possible to have a self-consistent worldview that does tell both men and women to expect less, but personally I think that would make for a worse society.

I'd be curious to hear from an experienced marriage counselor how often this kind of situation can be salvaged.

Not myself, but channeling another: "Research on toxic communication patterns in relationships shows that contempt is an accurate predictor of divorce." https://www.emberrelationshippsychology.com/blog/the-mistake...

> She should be told that in those terms, and you should demand an apology.

And how exactly this should help? It's clearly past that point already.

It also doesn't sounds like a sufficiently manly way to address the issue, in his wife's view.

> Her treatment of you is absolutely disgusting

I mean, this is par for the course for nearly every married man in the West, myself included. We are objectified as wallets, we are treated very poorly, and when they inevitably leave to "find myself", they collect 50% of the assets we've earned and saved, and we collect 50% of the debts they've racked up in their instagram-influenced spending.

You can characterize the situation as "disgusting", but it's reality for millions of us.

Reality doesn't care about our moral judgements. It is what it is. The best we can do is attempt to educate our sons on the risks inherent in contractually obligating oneself to people who hate you.

Certainly not the case for any of the married couples I know. What a ridiculous assertion.

Idk, I think it's pretty common. Certainly not for healthy relationships; but I'd wager there are a really really high number of not healthy relationships at any given moment, even if they don't usually last that long. There are toxic people all over the place, and not everyone is good at recognizing toxicity.

While I’m sure you’re right, the comment I replied to specifically said “nearly every married man.”

Not to discount the lived experiences of men in this thread, but the discussion in here reeks of bitter manosphere ideology. Maybe people need to stop extrapolating their toxic relationships to an entire gender, or blaming them on biology.

I would argue that a majority of men have encountered a potential partner that viewed them that way, but yeah applying that to all marriages is just... not even remotely true.

But you chose to marry this woman, so at that time you thought it would turn out well, and that the legal contract and possibility of paying alimony was fair?

Marriage is, unfortunately, not a rational decision for many of us. In my specific case, she got pregnant, and I "did the right thing" for the sake of a stable home for my child(ren).

And on that specific front, things are fine. The kids believe they are being raised in a warm, loving household. I've accepted my fate, but I will raise my son with different lessons than I had.

That said, I have (multiple) friends whose fiances turned from "Perfect Angel" into "Literally Hitler" the day after marriage, so even if my situation was a proper evaluation of my life partner, it should be noted that many men are defrauded by that particular trap as well.

> did the right thing

That's optimistic naïveté speaking. Marrying someone you got pregnant just because it's the right thing to do, is in fact very much the wrong thing.

> The kids believe they are being raised in a warm, loving household

Maybe when they are very young. Kids aren't stupid, and you can't fake a warm, loving relationship accurately enough nor consistently enough to keep them fooled very long. At some point way before they become adults they realize exactly what is going on. At best they'll pity you. At worst they'll resent you for subjecting them to your inability to adult.

You are of course spot on with your comment, just:

>> The kids believe they are being raised in a warm, loving household

> Maybe when they are very young.

Ehh, even a one year old is very good at sensing their parents' emotions.

> this is par for the course for nearly every married man in the West

Good grief, I hope not. My wife is nothing like that. At all. And very few of my friends and acquaintances have experienced a relationship like that. How sad to think that this is what marriage ought to be. That's horrifying. I'd be single and celibate before I'd let someone treat me that way.

You wouldnt even hear about it in most cases.

I feel for you. Nobody should have to put up with this kind of treatment. Take care of yourself and your kid.

I'm sorry for your situation. It's beyond crappy. If it's any comfort, know that there are people who don't assume you're the one at fault.

Not sure if you are waiting for an incentive, but here we go: leave her.

Well, I wouldn't advise that without knowing the full details of the situation, and especially how sensitive the kid is. I've heard many discussions on that point, with divorced parents arguing "it's better for the kid if they don't see us quarrel all the time" and those still being couples saying "a kid needs both parents."

My personal observation is that if the parents love the kid more than they dislike themselves, they are going to stay, at least until the kids become adults.

Kids need role models. One saying is roughly about: boys grow up wanting to be like their dads, and girls grow up wanting to marry similar men.

If kids are exposed to frequent arguments, spirals of primitive abuse, hatred, emotional coldness etc. they won't end up faring well in adulthood, and all the efforts of parents trying to stay together for them are pointless.

But yeah its a shitty situation where everybody loses.

We have enough information, though. The wife doesn't respect him. Regarding the kid, s/he will be fine. Even if there is some turmoil on the kid's life, your life as an adult also matters. You deserve to be happy. Don't sacrifice yourself to make what you think are the best decisions to your son. You really don't have all that power you think you have to influence their lifes.

That personal observation is an excellent point of wisdom.

I would replace "dislike" with "incompatible" though.

You can be very attracted physicslly to someone who is your intellectual and economic equal, to then not be able to hold it together because that person's personal traits ans preferences are so far off one's own. It goes beyond "he liked to watch tv instead of going out to eat w me"

That being said, your observation should be a heuristic, and it should be repeated more often.

My personal experience says that it's way better for the kid not to grow up in a dysfunctional household: they will grow up not even knowing what a functional relationship looks like. Just "being civil" to the other is not enough, kids will form their attachment models on how they see their parents interact.

If you want your kid to have successful relationships when they grow up, FFS don't let your kid grow up in an unsuccessful one.

right, but once you have a failed relationship, either choice (stay together or separate) will have a negative impact. so really, the best way to salvage the kids future is to actually repair the relationship.

Yes. Children are 800-3000% more likely to be physically or sexually abused by the mother's live-in boyfriend or step-father than by their biological father, but we don't want them to have bad feels.

Good call.

what are absolute numbers? because % is useless

That sacrifices the kids. It is at least worth a salvaging attempt.

I would not recommend divorcing. She has said she will remain married to you until the kids are adult. This is a GREAT commitment.

Appreciate that she has made this commitment. Confirm it to her and tell her you are on board, and you will make life as easy as possible for the both of you until then. See if she is willing to make the same commitment out loud.

I have a suspicion, perhaps too romantic, that once you and her are broken from the bonds of obligation, you will discover yourselves again and will voluntarily decide to stay together.

But then again, some people just shouldn't be married.

>> I would not recommend divorcing. She has said she will remain married to you until the kids are adult. This is a GREAT commitment.

So where I live, the standard for alimony is 1 year for every 3 that you are married. On top of that, if you're married 20+ years they think you should pay for life. There is no law that states this and couples are free to decide whatever they can agree to, but once layers are involved you're at a more significant financial risk the longer you stay married.

In short, if you honestly believe it will not work you should get out sooner rather than later. It will be better for both of you. Not sure about the kids though, but living under a broken relationship isn't good for them either.

You make a good point. It seems like society is disincentivizing long term marriages.

Man, I'm sorry to hear that. That's a terrible thing to hear.

I don't know the best way to proceed, since you no doubt have entanglements such as your children to consider, but I wish you all the best in finding your way out of that relationship. You deserve better than someone who would treat you that way.

how does gender even play into this? seems a lot more like you married a shitty person who has more rigid ideas about gender norms than you. this situation can just as easily apply to two men.

In fact I’ve watched it play in reverse many times. Men telling their partners to overcome psychological barriers to perform certain tasks to their preference for example.

A guy I knew once told his girlfriend “just be a mom!” when she was tired and their son was crying. Rather than be a dad, he demanded that she resume a role and shamed her for wanting a break.

And yet I’ve experienced the same as a man. The sort of “just be a man” mentality and rhetoric you can encounter is widespread and ranges through all depths of relationships. Ever been unemployed as a man? People can be absurdly insensitive and unkind about it. It really makes people uneasy sometimes… Like there must be something wrong with you. Never mind why you’re unemployed; there could be any number of valid reasons, but people seem to assume that’s not the case.

The point is that this isn’t a gendered problem. I suppose it’s a people being selfish problem first, coupled with many possible issues leading to the selfishness and the gendered presumptions we make about our partners. We do the same thing with genderless accusations though. We just want certain behaviours from our partners and use all kinds of means to justify it, gendered or not.

Your wife is closed minded, something often correlated with lower general cognitive ability.

But after that second quote about value, that is a big, fluttering red flag signal for you to leave. That is no longer a functioning relationship.

As a man, I find myself increasingly detesting other men who whine. Our society now wants all men to be able to cry just like women can and everyone should applaud. But we have a billion generations of evolution behind us pushing men who don't cry in the face of problems, but fight and overcome. Maybe I am just a backwards throwback, but maybe not. All of the men who cry in front of women (even women who claim crying is okay) that I've heard of are not embraced, but reviled. That is just biology. Toughen up.

As a happily married man (I say this only to pre-empt the aspersions of being a frustrated, involuntarily celibate man), I believe modern feminism has some logical inconsistencies, such as the above, to work out if it's to be a sustainable movement. I have my doubts, as fertility rates are higher in more conservative areas of the U.S. [0]. Another major inconsistency in feminism is upholding the career woman ideal, yet women's preference is still that the man should be higher earning or more successful.

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/fertility_rate/fer...

> Another major inconsistency in feminism is upholding the career woman ideal, yet women's preference is still that the man should be higher earning or more successful.

But this is not an inconsistency in feminism, this is a discrepancy between feminism and what many women actually want.

But then it's a movement by a minority of women who profess to speak for a majority of which the demonstrably do not represent

>But then it's a movement by a minority of women who profess to speak for a majority of which the demonstrably do not represent

I wonder how many analogues to that beyond feminism I can come up to that in a minute?

The thing is, I think we are just in a time of social rediscovery. Everything seems chaotic because there were a lot of repressed people in society who are just now finding the freedom not to hide themselves. Nobody really knows what it means to integrate all these new elements and we are trying to figure it out. Combined with larger geopolitical issues like economic inequality, immigration and climate change it seems like the whole world in in turmoil.

My point is that I feel like it's not necessary to hold these groups to the standard of being logically consistent and rational all the time. The movements are still in their infancy. They will make mistakes. It's all experimental right now. We will figure it out, but it may take generations so the best thing to do is just relax and be supportive.

Not sure why you’re downvoted so hard, but I absolutely agree that we are in a transitional state and so inconsistencies can exist (but not persist). Eventually, modern feminism will need to figure out how to empower women and convert (or create) more to sustain the movement. Otherwise, the default appears to be some form of religious fundamentalism.

The society I can think of that has made the most progress is Israel, as it is modern but also has a TFR of 3 and generally is an outlier on plots of TFR and GDP per capita

> We will figure it out, but it may take generations so the best thing to do is just relax and be supportive.

This sounds weird to me, like "support damaging behavior because that's how people find themselves". Because, after all, damaging behavior is what this thread is about. Sure, maybe someone will grow out of being an ass, but maybe they won't. If you support them "no matter what" instead of calling them out, you're prolonging that behavior.

> it's not necessary to hold these groups to the standard of being logically consistent and rational all the time

Not that we can't forgive and make mistakes, but aiming for other than "being logically consistent and rational" is likely a road to Hell, or rudderless at best.

They are actively teaching and promoting said freedoms to children. Its not just chain breaking but also bias building.

Eloquently put, you can add height on top of that. Any close woman I've talked to about this admitted that man needs to be higher, or cca same height. Otherwise he needs to be one hell of a charmer.

Another point is overall physique. Almost no woman admits it, but ask good looking gym builders who don't overdo it, how easy is for them to get a date. I don't mean from all women, but finding some decent looking one, often smart is simply much easier. Or even better - ask a smart well earning guy who was weak and pale who went through proper gym/sport transformation (while remaining smart well earning) - the change of interest from women is ridiculous. I can attest to that, I've changed few personal opinions after putting in enough time with free weights. Its not so much about muscle mass per se, but overall posture, confidence, happiness and projection of strength.

Women, much more than men, like to feel they are above primitive emotions and impulses. Well sometimes only till they aren't.

> Women, much more than men, like to feel they are above primitive emotions and impulses. Well sometimes only till they aren't.

Women have been ostracized, sometimes killed, for not appearing virtuous for thousands of years. Women strongly retain a defense mechanism of virtue signaling in sexual relations. It's overwhelming and suppresses true sexual preferences among women of all types (education, income level, age, cultural background and so on). Always keep this in mind when reading what heterosexual women say they want in a potential partner.

The critical flaw in contemporary popular feminism is the inability to acknowledge both that women have agency and that women use that agency to enforce gender roles.

E.g. the pay gap. The pay gap opens up only after marriage and especially children; in the majority of major metropolitan areas today, young single women actually earn more than men.

Heterosexual women's mate choice is what drives this: they have a strong preference for a male who makes more over one who earns less. Everyone wants to earn more money, but men have the additional incentive of needing to earn more to attract a mate. Given this incentive structure, it's inevitable that men as a group will outearn women.

Most individual women have an easy way to contribute to the pay gap statistic: either by not pairing at all, or by pairing with a man who wants to play a supportive role at home instead of being the "breadwinner." The large majority of women choose the tradeoff that results in the current social structure we see.

Men, of course, also use their agency to create this world with restrictive gender roles. But everyone recognizes this; point out that women also bear responsibility for their use of agency to create it and you get, at best, called nasty names.

> The critical flaw in contemporary popular feminism is the inability to acknowledge both that women have agency and that women use that agency to enforce gender roles. [...] point out that women also bear responsibility for their use of agency to create it and you get, at best, called nasty names.

This isn't accurate: Contemporary feminism has long been obsessed with this topic; specifically, how some women contribute to their own oppression. Books have been published debating whether or not this is an inherently bad thing. You're conflating feminism and society, but society isn't feminist. Sure, libertarianism exists, but our current governments aren't libertarian, even if they pay lip service to the ideas and ideals; the same applies to feminism.

Contemporary popular feminism treats women as reactive objects; slightly more sophisticated takes grant that women contribute to their own oppression, but usually through the lens of being duped by the patriarchy. And it has frighteningly little to say about how women contribute to oppressive gender roles placed on men, with many variants denying gender based oppression is even a valid category for men.

Finally somebody has had the courage to point out the "critical flaw" in contemporary modern feminism, a philosophy noted for it's static nature and universally shared beliefs!

Your thoughts and ideas are reasonable enough but you should have a little more intellectual humility when presenting them.

My only counter to what you've said is that I think while you acknowledge the inertia of the status quo makes on current gender dynamics, you are not appreciating how making even the slightest decision against the prevailing culture is incredibly difficult.

For example, I have a male, married friend who had a child and they used the mother's last name. This seemingly minor, insignificant little protest has already caused him like 10 problems because nobody can imagine a child not having their father's last name. Going against the status quo is not easy!

Note I said contemporary popular feminism. Obviously feminism contains multitudes, but what dominates the mass and social media is much less sophisticated take that doesn't do justice to the thinkers who conceptualize it.

Not normally something I'd get involved in (and I don't necessarily agree with OP), but I think you need to take a hard look at how you interpreted that. When you say sarcastically say "noted for it's static nature" and OP has already added the "contemporary, modern" qualifiers, well you're pretty much straw-manning them. They've already addressed the point that they don't think it's static, that they're pointing to specific ideas at a particular time in the best way they can.

So like, OP predicted your argument and tried their best to explain that's not what they meant, and you ran with that interpretation anyway. Unless there's some edit shenanigans going on that I don't see, I don't know. I'm trying to figure out a polite way to say this, but like from where I'm sitting you don't look like you're responding to OP, you look like you're responding to a straw-man that OP went out of their way to explain was not what they were actually saying.

> Men, of course, also use their agency to create this world with restrictive gender roles.

> The large majority of women choose the tradeoff that results in the current social structure we see.

As I said, the OP has reasonable points but to skate over these two obviously connected points while pointing out a "critical flaw" in feminist theory is very incomplete.

It it also a disingenuous argumentative technique to say that his points are so dangerous that to bring them up would get somebody called names. Most if not all academics would be happy to argue any of these points without name calling.

And also it is ridiculous to say that "contemporary, modern feminism" is a well defined term that means the same thing to everybody. What's modern conservatism mean? Modern liberalism?

Nothing is a well defined term that means the same thing to everybody, so if those are the standards you keep it's going to be impossible to have any kind of discussion. None the less it is possible for people to communicate, even given the vagaries of language, if you're willing to extend people the benefit of the doubt and try to actually understand what they're saying. I think you were remiss in your duty to extend that benefit of the doubt, to try to understand what OP was saying, and I think that's why you were dismissed and they're not responding to your more substantive arguments.

You might benefit from a read through of these articles: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FaJaCgqBKphrDzDSj/37-ways-th...

Particularly the bit on "The Cluster Structure of Thingspace"

>>A verbal definition works well enough in practice to point out the intended cluster of similar things, but you nitpick exceptions. Not every human has ten fingers, or wears clothes, or uses language; but if you look for an empirical cluster of things which share these characteristics, you'll get enough information that the occasional nine-fingered human won't fool you.

Ok, what's the generally agreed on definition of popular modern conservatism?

There isn't one, and yet we still manage to have conversations about the alt-right and republicans and overturning abortion.

Also I'm not from the US so this really isn't my fight at all, I'm not arguing with you about this I'm just trying to point out where you're making a mistake that is going to make it difficult to communicate.

Here's an example, instead of saying "you can't point at contemporary modern feminism because language is hard and ideas are fuzzy" you can say "I don't think that the vice you're accusing these people of really comes up that often". Instead of trying to debate whether true feminists are whatever OP accused them of, you can just say that you don't think whatever OP accused them of is really a big deal that affects very many real people. Skip the definitional debate (you know what group they're trying to point at) and get right to the meat of the argument, whether that issues actually shows up in real life.

A person can want to earn their own living while also wanting a viable and optimal partnership with a qualified person.

If you see people as at least partially rational actors, "Have enough income on your own that you're not trapped in a situation with anyone," and, "Have a partner that is successful," aren't two opposed concepts.

It's not a logical inconsistency, it's actually rational. I think you may be falsely equating "consistency" and "fairness," or "equability," but they're distinct concepts: A person can want to be successful and still find a successful partner more attractive. This isn't inconsistent.

The inconsistency is when someone complains that their career is considered secondary to their partner's, when they intentionally sought after a partner with a more developed career.

> major inconsistency in feminism is upholding the career woman ideal, yet women's preference is still that the man should be higher earning or more successful.

Women's preferences don't define feminism. I think the Feminism is not a good word to describe feminism because it creates associations like these.

> Another major inconsistency in feminism is upholding the career woman ideal, yet women's preference is still that the man should be higher earning or more successful.

And here is why there is not a single feminism. I made two categories, but there is more, it is just easier for my brain. You have the "liberal" feminism, targeting equality, and the "traditional" feminism (inherited from Emma Goldman and other marxist and Marxist-adgascent like Beauvoir, so maybe calling it traditional is wrong. Postmodern Feminism?) targeting emancipation. Emancipation is not equality, it is just asking to have the possibility to do what you are able to do (aka firewoman, general, or pornstar).

Short story about emancipation and empowerment:

At first, i thought it was the same. That the French "émanciper" was translated as "empowered", and did not go further. Then like 8 years ago (i was still a lib at the time), i've heard at the radio "We don't have an equivalent in French, this is the idea of empowerment". So i looked into the difference between emancipation and empowerment. Empowerment is practices to reach freedom for the self within the institutional structures, and emancipation, is a process of freedom for the self and others in society through challenging and changing the existing structures of power. Giorgia Meloni and Simone Veil.

Perhaps unrelated, but there's the large problem of unaddressed spousal abuse that victimizes men. Self-reported data from here in Canada[0] shows that men are more likely to experience spousal violence overall, albeit roughly half as likely to experience sexual assault or a serious beating.

But there are no shelters for men in most provinces, and many shelters that accept children will reject male children over a certain age. Moreover, based on court-enforced outcomes, men who leave an abusive home face a serious risk of significantly diminished custody and access in the future[1].

The fact is, a lot of Canadian men are living in abusive homes with nowhere to turn and the knowledge that if they leave their children will be left to face their abuser alone.

0: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2016001/article...

1: https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/jr/jf-pf/2017/nov02.html

Violence against men by women isn't socially considered violence.

Similarly, circumcision is not regarded with the disgust and horror as FGM is.

I spent valuable credits in my degree arguing that it should be. Clearly I didn't make a good argument, as I didn't get a good grade ;)

In all fairness though, these don't really seem comparable considering that FGM is only done to reduce/eliminate sexual pleasure for females and that's not the case for male circumcision.

You can say the same for most cases of male circumcision. No, it's not that hard to wash the weewee properly. No, most men will not suffer problems. The adult world outside the US isn't having massive health problems over the lack of circumcision.

>You can say the same for most cases of male circumcision.

No you can't. Do you think circumcised men don't fully enjoy sex? Where did you get that idea from?

You said "reduce/eliminate". It most certainly reduces, as far as I know.

I also don't see your point in being pedantic. Both are procedures which do not benefit the majority and are an active effort to make most lives worse (be it unknowingly or knowingly). The only case for male circumcision, is the extreme minority of men who would suffer otherwise.

Surely you're not going to make your case on this petty a detail.

>It most certainly reduces, as far as I know.

That would be news to hundreds of millions of men.

>Surely you're not going to make your case on this petty a detail.

I think any sane person would see removal of the clitoris to be quite different.

There are several variants of FGM, and not all involve removal of the clitoris. The most benign forms involve a symbolic pin prick that is certainly less damaging to the genitals and future sexual pleasure than removal of the foreskin. And yet all types of "female circumcision" are literally referred to as mutilation, and considered bad. Will you argue in favor of allowing the pin-prick variant for baby girls, since you support a more traumatic operation for baby boys?

>Surely you're not going to make your case on this petty a detail.

It's called pilpul and he obviously will.

There are multiple types of FGM, one of them involves removing the clitoris and the other is extremely similar to circumcision.

It literally is done to reduce sexual pleasure. Circumcision was popularized in the US as a way to stop masturbation, which doctors believe was responsible for various social and medical problems.

From Wikipedia’s bios on two of the people responsible for the spread of the practice, Lewis Sayre and John Harvey Kellogg:

> In 1870, Sayre began using circumcision as a purported cure for several cases of young boys diagnosed with paralysis or significant motor problems. He thought the procedure ameliorated such problems based on a "reflex neurosis" theory of disease, which held that excessive stimulation of the genitals (i.e., masturbation) was a disturbance to the equilibrium of the nervous system and a cause of systemic problems.

>Kellogg did promote extensive measures to prevent masturbation addiction. He circumcised himself at age 37. His methods for the "rehabilitation" of masturbation addicts included measures up to the point of cutting off part of the genitals, without anesthetic, on both sexes; he wrote men who did should be circumcised and women that did should have carbolic acid applied to their clitoral glans.

Interestingly, both reduce the pleasure for women.

>>But there are no shelters for men in most provinces

People have tried, the last person I am aware of that tried to get a mens shelter off the ground was harassed to the point of suicide, and faced extreme resistance and protesting in attempting to fund it. There is lots of government funds for womens shelters, and zero government funds for mens shelters

> anything to dispel that notion makes your value plummet

The disgusting thing is that if one's value does plummet, that serves as a blank check for the partner to harm the relationship as a passive-aggressive feedback mechanism to discourage subsequent behavior like it, be that withdrawal, or avoidance, or picking fights over inconsequential things.

Thus, men should constantly be striving for more value (read: status), or risk losing leverage with those they love. In a sense, projected status anxiety ensures that it is impossible for men to fully escape the evaluative sphere.

Internalizing this will age your soul, and not in a good way.

> The disgusting thing is that if one's value does plummet

A more disgusting thing to me is the idea that people see their partners (or believe their partners see them) as having “value” like they’re a breathing stock ticker symbol.

I say value to mean "status," but for either word, I fully agree.

Something's profoundly wrong when people put so much importance on what is an externally mediated measure. I don't know what it points to other than a sort of spiritual void, but the status game is one you are statistically almost guaranteed to lose.

It is the thing I hate most about my 30s and 40s: the utter seriousness with which status is regarded.

> It is the thing I hate most about my 30s and 40s: the utter seriousness with which status is regarded.

There are some sad stories in these threads.

I just want to add that not all partners are like this.

But the ones we attract in certain parts of our lives are definitely prone to it! When our self-identity (or at least our time and energy) is wrapped up in material success, or job prestige or some other externality, we attract people who agree with us.

It's a delicate edge, because most of us want to build, accomplish, achieve something that makes us proud of our efforts, and we dump a lot of that into "work" in our most-eligible years.

So if we "succeed", or move toward success, we attract those that see us the same way we imagine that part of ourselves.

And then the rest of life starts happening. I want to live in a van and see the national parks! I want to take the modest exit and move to the Caribbean. I want to get a dog and stop running in place in BigCity. I've saved enough and don't want to deal with issue X. Etc.

This new status is not always met with the same enthusiasm as the climbing part of our journey. We created the fiction, so maybe it's not completely fair to be disappointed when our focus shifts and theirs does not.

(I don't mean to suggest that I know anything about your life, I'm just riffing on your last sentence.)

> I want to get a dog and stop running in place in BigCity.

I can't recommend this enough!

"What people call "love" it's just a chemical reaction that compels animals to breed. It hits hard, then it slowly fades, leaving you stranded in a failing marriage. I did it, your parents are gonna do it, break the cycle Morty, focus on science."

The harsh reality of life is that all relationships are necessarily about value transference. If we're not stronger together than we are apart, then what the hell are we doing together. If you're sucking more value out of me than you're giving back, then you're a parasite and I'd be better off without you.

If you're not doing the calculation of whether a relationship is and will continue to be mutually beneficial, you're almost certainly going to become a host for a parasite.

Who is Morty?

TV show character (Rick and Morty)

From "Rick and Morty": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7m1s2NFOGyg

Oh geez. Isn’t that the show where the fans threw tantrums at McDonalds to get a special nugget sauce? Probably not where I’d look for life advice.

Based on the behavior of the fans? That doesn't make much sense.

In general it's not intended to offer advice, but there are some moments that invite thought, for sure.

Isn’t the creator also a bit of a narcissistic creep?

Are you going somewhere with these questions? If you disagree with the quote just say so, and say why. Discrediting the show, its fans, or its creator is just an ad hominem attack. And not a very good one at that, since you seem to be guessing.

> mattgreenrocks 17 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [–]

> anything to dispel that notion makes your value plummet The disgusting thing is that if one's value does plummet, that serves as a blank check for the partner to harm the relationship as a passive-aggressive feedback mechanism to discourage subsequent behavior like it, be that withdrawal, or avoidance, or picking fights over inconsequential things

the devalue phase of an unhealthy narcissistic relationship is not representative of most healthy relationships. a healthy compassion based relationship would see a value plummet met with support.

I hate that I speak from experience on the matter.

I'm sorry you speak from experience, but it does give insight and a small feeling of not-being-alone to read this.

Thank you.

If I want to break up with a woman, without me doing the breaking up? I have a moment of vulnerability over something, even allow myself to cry. She'll do the rest.

You're allowed to cry when your mother dies or your dog dies. Anything else and you may as well be wearing a dress. The constant encouragement to be vulnerable and express feelings is merely a test to make sure you're still "masculine enough."

A social hacker! You never had to initiate the hard conversation. Just indulge your feelings a bit, it's even a little therapeutic, and then the burden for ending things is on her.

If you want a moment of nastiness, during the Breakup Speech, you whirl around and say, "It's really because I cried over X, isn't it?" and there's this uncomfortable squirm and outright denial, because they will never admit it.

>Anything else and you may as well be wearing a dress.

I've always found it strange how women wearing men clothes is normal and just a style choice, while men wearing women's clothes is perverse and emasculating. Even many of the pro equality people feel this way

I’m not saying it’s fair, but it’s pretty obvious why this is the case.

A 200lb man, who has the physical ability kill someone with their bare hands crying over an emotional vulnerability is scary. The issue isn’t “men aren’t allowed to have feelings”, but men are expected to have self-control over how they express themselves.

This is the one and only answer. Every other comment in this thread can be deleted.

Many - if not all - of the difficult modern sociological problems we face are rooted in the inability for people to accept that while our technological understanding is, frankly, unfathomable compared to 100,000 years ago, our biology, our neurobiology, etc., is all still running under the software that was developed hundreds of thousands of years ago.

Or as I like to say, our Software might be up to date but our OS and BIOS are still legacy.

This is great. I'm putting this in my favorite comments.

Is your idea that Software could be an analogy for our worldview, OS could be an analogy for instincts and BIOS an analogy for genes or do you mean something entirely different to my interpretation?

Precisely. There is a (now outdated) model called Truine Brain model which proposes three layers of intelligence: the cortex which is responsible for higher thinking/planning/executive functions, the limbic system responsible for 4Fs/emotions, and the basal gangalia/brainstem responsible for basic functions like movement, homeostasis and etc. It's uncanny how this matches closely with the Software/OS/BIOS analogy.

I'm skeptical that biology plays a significant role in this, it seems much more likely that it is a purely societal and cultural artefact.

I think the answer is almost always “both”, and there should be a high bar for evidence if someone is going to posit that either one is the sole driver.

Take our social norms around sleep, for instance. We call bad dreams “nightmares”, we set our business hours to 9-5, etc etc. All of this is social, but clearly there is a biological link because we’re not inherently nocturnal animals.

Not everything has a biological link though. Why is the color pink associated with girls and blue with boys? Purely an artefact of cultural zeitgeist, pink used to be masculine.

IIRC the invention of agriculture caused a huge shift in cultural dynamics as regards sex and gender world wide, favoring men. It is not unreasonable to think that an age that lasted 10kyrs might have some lingering affects on how we view the world.

The pink/blue thing is low hanging fruit because it’s (at least apparently) obvious that we don’t have any biological predisposition towards sex-based color choices. Also, I’m not aware of any culture that’s free from western influence that has similar color norms.

But most other norms are more complicated. So the idea of the man as a physically strong provider - it’s not universal but it’s extremely common across the world.

I just got done reading Jesus and John Wayne. A century or more of hammering it into boys and men that we're inadequate if we're not virulent warrior providers had to have predictable consequences, didn't it?

Where are the cultures that didn't hammer that into men?

Cultures and societies are subject to the same kind of natural selection as individuals and species. Cultures that are self sustaining, defensible, and expansionary are the ones that win out in the end.

I suspect the commonalities have to do with essentially all of our cultures being agricultural for thousands of years. Before that was half a million years of being hunter gatherers, a completely different lifestyle. And now we are moving into an era when almost all of us will be city dwellers. I expect our culture will change a lot during that transition.

I don't think city dwelling is going to be the driver of change. We've been doing that for thousands of years.

It's the automation of force that will drive change to how we view maleness. The increasing reality is that strong, aggressive males aren't nearly as necessary in the battlefield for the defense of societies. A 100lb woman can pilot a drone and drop bombs just as well as a 300lb linebacker of a male. Humanoid robots are rapidly entering the scene and will start to replace human soldiers and police officers as the ground units of power projection. eSports will start to overshadow the NFL as we start socially valuing individual human strength less and less in favor of tactical and strategic ability to control robots.

Societies have always used young males as disposable members who are thrown into the most dangerous and lethal jobs for the simple biological reality that wombs are scarce and sperm is not. If all of the lethal work gets automated away (a fantastic thing!) then that will be one of the most drastic changes to human social order that has ever happened.

> A 100lb woman can pilot a drone and drop bombs just as well as a 300lb linebacker of a male.

You are making the same mistake as the clowns that cry how you “can’t use your AR15 to stop the government”.

Ignoring the reality of asymmetrical warfare, and failure of the strongest military or universe has ever seen failing to secure a state of uneducated farmers and merchants for the last 20 years…

If your goal is to glass something - sure the 100lb recruits in the drone program are your go-to. We leveled two parts of Japan and it ended things, then the math changed with mutually assured destruction.

But that isn’t how you actually take something over.

You take things by putting your people on street corners. Going door to door. Preventing undesirable assembly. Securing travel and trade.

Tanks and drones really suck at standing on the corner. The soldier isn’t as outdated as you suggest.

You have no idea how much this software can be changed with an consistent effort exerted over many decades.

Funny how the results of polyamory and responsible nonmonogamy in the Bay Area was “high status men having more sex with more people”. Wonder how that happened.

Yes we all know grooming works and it doesn't take decades. Though the government tries similar at the slower rate of decades.

I have experienced this first hand as well and will never commit that naive mistake again.

See also the responses of women learning their partner is bisexual or their dating racial preferences.

Their mating strategy optimizes for status and in the process creates and reinforces the very structures they claim to oppose. What they are really opposing is the negative effects these structures have on them.

They are not evil or man-hating, but all of us are ruled by instinct way more than we would like to admit. And the people self aware enough to recognize and avoid reacting to them, specially when they relate to something as important as romantic relationships, are not very common.

To be fair, there are women out there who are consistently feminist and whose revealed relationship preferences match the rhetoric.

But of course cherrypicking just the convenient parts of feminism is common, and it's not always easy to tell early on what kind of person the other one is.

Good point. The features women are attracted to: confidence, money, physical prowess, etc. all go hand in hand with the masculine behaviors society is rallying against. It is a bit confusing to me as an adult with a long time relationship, I can't imagine how you would navigate that as a 13 year old. At 13 I was basically doing backflips trying to get girls to notice me lol.

It is also possible that all the modern pressures and beliefs won't really override physical attraction. In general if someone is pretty to look at they have a lot of slack personality wise, whether they are a chest thumping mansplainer or an emotional crybaby.

There's good advice for an individual and good advice for a society, and as a young person it's hard to tell these things apart.

Good for society: People should not be harassed or mugged when they walk at night. Good advice for an individual: Stay aware of your surroundings and make situational choices about your clothes and behavior.

Good for society: Men should also express their feelings, including their bad ones. Good for individuals: Know who is safe to express your feelings to, and who is not.

There was a big revelation that maybe we should try to improve society instead of all the victim blaming of the 70s-90s. I think it's great that we focus on perpetrators more than victims, but we forgot to tell individuals that they still live in a imperfect world, and that even though it's not their fault when they get targeted, they could still take action to protect themselves while waiting for society to improve.

> There's good advice for an individual and good advice for a society, and as a young person it's hard to tell these things apart.

This is an awesome way to put it and applies to so many more topics of public debate. Consider as a simple example:

Good for society: Close tax loopholes. Good for individuals: Exploit tax loopholes.

We should all be mindful that this distinction exists, and acknowledging it openly should be part of healthy debate culture.

> The features women are attracted to: confidence, money, physical prowess, etc. all go hand in hand with the masculine behaviors society is rallying against.

I think this is wrong - like 180 degrees wrong. The mode of failure I see most often for men is low EQ - misreading the wants / needs of the woman and delivering the wrong things with no awareness of where they are going wrong.

The reason why women find confidence attractive is because low self esteem / insecurity is often the root cause of negative and harmful behaviors. See pride and envy occupying the lowest circles of hell.

Many guys totally misread this as women want assholes, rather than incessant approval seeking behavior indicates low self esteem / insecurity which has the potential to make her life hell. It’s not that you can’t be kind to women, you just need to be doing it for the right reasons - because you feel this is the right way to conduct yourself - and not because you are scared that you are unworthy of love or admiration.

180 degrees wrong? So women are attracted to shy, poor, unhealthy guys? Why did I waste my 20s in the gym!! Damn I wish I had your pearls of wisdom back then.

Women don’t want assholes, they want security, and the traits I listed are all indications of security, whereas being emotionally sensitive is less so. Hell everyone wants security, it’s why confidence is so attractive.

A shy, unhealthy, broke guy who is comfortable in his own skin will have happier more fulfilling relationships with women than a swole, rich, narcissist. Narcissism btw, is a one of those negative behaviors whose root cause is insecurity / low self esteem.

If your time in the gym was a path to being more comfortable with who you are then it wasn’t a waste of time. Maybe you were good enough all along and just didn’t realize / believe it

You may be right, but the point is that guy would have no shot at finding a relationship. Being comfortable with who you are would naturally stem from being wealthy, handsome, social, and fit.

Being comfortable with who you are would naturally stem from being wealthy, handsome, social, and fit

there are a lot more factors that help with being confident with yourself.

i am none of these things: wealthy, handsome, social, and fit yet i am quite confident with myself. i'd say that with all the mistakes my parents may have made, this is one of the positive things i got out of my childhood. it probably also helped that i grew up in an environment where these things didn't matter. there was noone wealthy in my school, noone telling me that i had to be handsome, or that not being social or not being fit were bad.

> Narcissism btw, is a one of those negative behaviors whose root cause is insecurity / low self esteem.

[citation needed] (no snark intended)

I mean a quick Google search brings up a lot of results. Here is one cherry picked news release / article.

https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2021/march/...

Not able to fully read everything in the actual paper [1], but here are some things I found as notable:

> We are interested in the nature of narcissism. Narcissism is a personality disorder that is conceptualized as excessive self-love and manifests as a grandiose sense of self-importance, entitlement, and superiority (American Psychiatric Association, 2013; Auerbach, 1993; Freud, 1914).

> More recently, two subtypes of narcissism have been distinguished. “Vulnerable narcissism” characterized by low self-esteem, anxiety about attachments and extreme sensitivity to criticism and “grandiose narcissism”, which manifests as high self-esteem, self-aggrandizement and self-importance (Dickinson & Pincus, 2003; Rohmann, Neumann, Herner, & Bierhoff, 2012; Wink, 1991). This distinction has shown itself to be fruitful - vulnerable narcissism is associated with low self-esteem, life-satisfaction, and interdependent self-construct. Conversely, grandiose narcissism is associated with high self-esteem and life-satisfaction and an independent self-construction (Rohmann, Hanke, & Bierhoff, 2019; Rose, 2002). These differential attitudes also present behaviorally. Both grandiose and vulnerable narcissists have a tendency to deliberately induce jealousy in their romantic partners, but for different reasons - a vulnerable narcissist is motivated by insecurities and seeks reassurance to compensate for low self-esteem whereas a grandiose narcissist induces jealousy primarily to gain power and control in the relationship (Tortoriello, Hart, Richardson, & Tullett, 2017).

> . . .

> Grandiose narcissism seems to resemble psychopathy in many respects, which raises the possibility that the tessellation of these conditions could be improved. It appears to be the case that grandiose narcissism might be better understood as a manifestation of psychopathy. This notion is supported by the finding that individuals who strongly exhibit psychopathic traits also tend to have a grandiose sense of self-worth (Gustafson & Ritzer, 1995; Miller, Sleep, Crowe, & Lynam, 2020). Conversely, vulnerable narcissism might be better conceived of as “narcissism proper” or “primary narcissism”.

Looks like they are pretty much trying to rebrand grandiose narcissism to psychopathy as you might suggest. Not really sure I see any value in changing the widely understood definition. I also didn't see any numbers about which type was actually more prevalent, however. Again, I was only able to do a cursory review. At this point, I think it's fair to conclude that there's more than one type of narcissism and that one of them probably has nothing to do with low self esteem, while the other probably does.

1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019188692...!

Society is very clearly railing against men trying to be assertive to the point that many would opt to not try at all. At the same time, we see research with token correlations coming out, specifically mentioning Western women respond positively to men with "dark triad" attributes.

Even the "quit dating assholes" stereotype is obvious, with women falling for the typical cocky jerk who goes against what society claims a man should be. Then it turns out, that guy ended up being problematic and scarred the girl for life.

Does that mean assertiveness has to be dark? No. But frankly, society is doing a lot to kill the "dark assertiveness" while not doing anything to insert "light assertiveness", if you're willing to view it that way. We're not exactly raising boys to be cowboys and gentlemen, we're raising them to be doormats and appeal to women in ways which clearly aren't dropping panties.

There is a difference between being assertive and being unaware / insensitive to the thoughts and feelings of others. Being kind and compassionate does not mean that you are a doormat - because kindness and compassion spreads from within starting with kindness and compassion for yourself.

The seven virtues provides a useful framework to think about this. Prudence (emotional intelligence) gives rise to justice (knowing what is owed to whom), which gives rise to fortitude (assertiveness), which gives rise to moderation. Moderation without fortitude is cowardice. Fortitude without justice is tyranny. And justice without prudence is injustice. A little esoteric, but St Augustine knew a few things about life :)

You're conveniently talking past me. Let me make it simple.

It is very evident that [confident jerk] > [lacking confidence]. Kindness and compassion are not substitutes for confidence and assertiveness, as far as both anecdotes and token evidence goes.

As far as society goes, it is removing [confident jerk] in boys. It is not replacing it with [confidence]. It is also not teaching girls to actively value any of your other supposed virtues. Congratulations, most boys are now [lacking confidence], one of the few measuring standards.

Your "useful framework" does not align with the reality of the western world.

I think there are a couple of points where we misunderstand each other.

1. In my view “confident jerk” == lacking confidence. The confident jerks usually have the lowest self esteem. Their “confidence” tends to be a facade - a lie they tell themselves - which is why they seem to always have something to prove.

2. Assertiveness is not necessarily indicative of confidence. Again, it is clear that some of the most assertive wanna be dominant people are deeply insecure and simply acting out to assuage their internal feelings of low self esteem.

3. Compassion and kindness require true self confidence.

You can be assertive without being a jerk. Society and moral philosophy generally encourage this; and they discourage being a jerk. The difference is that constructive assertiveness is kind and compassionate and comes from a place of confidence. Destructive assertiveness comes from a place of low self esteem (pride/envy). Moral philosophers have written about this for over a thousand years so I don’t think that these values are especially modern.

The writing of St Augustine are a key part of the foundations of modern western (Judeo Christian) moral philosophy. This they offer many insights into moral reasoning in modern western society.

> In my view “confident jerk” == lacking confidence. The confident jerks usually have the lowest self esteem.

I find this to be a very convenient belief, in the same vein as "criminals are stupid" or "[not my political party] is stupid" or "good things happen to good people" or "bullies are insecure." I don't see any evidence or have any reason to believe that confident jerks are secretly harboring internal conflict, as satisfying as it may be to believe.

Most criminals are kind of stupid though - at least the ones who commit crimes that don’t involve some form of financial gain. Note: this is the belief among criminals themselves.

I mean the convergence of beliefs across a bunch of religions and moral philosophies is probably pretty good evidence. They were not exactly running randomized controlled trials; but they were smart people who thought a lot about this stuff. I’m not sure that the methods of modern behavioral science are so much more advanced :)

Otherwise this is just like one of those “obvious”, self evident things (i.e. obvious to some not to others). I do concede that there are a subset of jerks who have Dunning Kruger syndrome as well as a small number of true sociopaths out there.

Criminals who get caught are often stupid. We know nothing about the ones that don't get caught. The ones that don't get caught might actually make up the majority of criminals.

> low self esteem / insecurity is often the root cause of negative and harmful behaviors.

Low self esteem and insecurity aren't the problem. Lots of people suffer from it through little fault of their own and, frankly, people who think they're always right and never question themselves can be just as toxic.

The problem is people repressing their insecurities, acting out and making other people responsible for their pain, instead of facing their insecurities head on e.g. through therapy.

My mother had cancer when I was in high school. My Dad ended up crying when my grandmother was around over it. My grandmother then told my Mom that she didn't think he was up to being her husband through difficult times.

I have a lot of female friends. They will rip their boyfriends apart for vulnerable moments or emotional needs or economic inadequacies. One complained about him having to visit his dying aunt and leaving her alone for a weekend. Another called her boyfriend a loser for not making enough money for them to live in Vancouver proper (an expensive place). Heck, my mother has called my father as loser for "only" making about 250K a year (my parents live in a 1 million person LCOL city).

Find better people to hang out with. Not everybody is like that. Do all you can to cut that sort of toxic behavior from your life.

Man, I am sorry to say but you have some f**ed up people around you, care to maybe let some of them off your life? Quality over quantity of relationships as in everything else

This isn’t “normal”, or at least it’s not in my experience. They sound like immature spoiled brats.

Surprisingly more normal than people realize. Most don’t ever air their dirty laundry like this.

You go through this as a man and it reinforces your suppression of feelings and desires to never open up to anyone because of the humiliation.

No wonder men kill themselves 4x as often as women.

Curious how much your mother makes and the girlfriend as well.

My mom is a stay at home mom. My friend is a non profit manager. I don’t know what she earns, but I don’t imagine it is six figures.

Oooof. OK, thanks for delivering.

I come from a conservative Muslim country, and there is no doubt that we’re well behind America in terms of gender equality when considering the whole picture. But I think there are areas where we are distinctly ahead. The women in my family are all highly educated and accomplished. But at the same time, none grew up being fed a narrative that what will make them happy is to find a sensitive man who shares their taste in music. And none believe that. American society by contrast feeds women all these false narratives. And then it leaves them holding the bag—raising children alone, etc.—when ideals don’t match reality.

but the problem is that those ideals are the result of the western model of gender equality. maybe they are false narratives, but the current alternative is going back to the inequality of the past.

the question then would be, how does gender equality look like that doesn't rely on these narratives?

if on the other hand we assume that these ideals are good, then the problem is not that the narratives are false, but that we haven't yet actually achieved equality.

I think that’s a false dichotomy. First, greater equality today isn’t only, and possibly isn’t even primarily, a function of “ideals” but instead economic change. Women are more equal to men today because “good jobs” involve knowledge work, instead of putting up utility polls are lifting up heavy things on an assembly line.

Second, you can have “moral equality” without assuming “fungibility.” My cousin just got married. The wife is brilliant—she’s civil engineer. The aunties are all impressed. But if they have a baby and her priorities shift and she decides she wants to stay home (which happens to many women!) those same aunties will 100% expect my cousin to take up the slack and support the family, because he’s the man. Morally equal, but not fungible.

yes, that's true, but that is not the equality we seem to want in the west. statistics show that female engineers are still a stark minority in the west. we are far from achieving equality here. in muslim countries and in china there are way more women in those fields. there is a school of thought that believes that the reason for that is because in the east, women can't get equality at home, so they find it at work. whereas in the west, women are expecting to get equality at home and are therefore not looking for it at work. my personal guess is that in the west career is more important to men than family, whereas in the east family matters more, and women only achieve equality in the areas that matter less.

traditionally picking up the slack would mean for the man to go earn more money. but women want to keep working. and, this is part of the issue, in middle to lower income families they have to. we have created a situation where a single income is no longer enough to support a family. the economic change is not financial freedom for women as much as a financial dependency on both parents working.

and the narrative we are creating and that we seem to want is that men help in the household and with childcare. and that too is happening but only just enough so that everyone supporting that narrative can point to an example, but not as much as everyone thinks. even in households where both parents are working, most of the housework is still done by women.

Huh? Connect the dots between the narrative of pairing up with a partner who shares your taste in music and raising children alone? This reads like a parody. Are the men spurning their children because of the woman's scorn for Post Malone?

I read "shares taste in music" as "will have extensive common interests / be best friend".

When the narrative of "the one" breaks down, marriages dissolve. Children get custodial_parents -= 1.

I'm confident children are better off in two-parent households, but I also have plenty of friends who've gone through divorces, and not one of them fails to care for their children. It's just a mystifying thing for Rayiner to have said. Women have been sold a bill of goods, he claims, and as a result, men are abandoning their children. The tragedy of it all!

Some divorced moms don't do a great job of letting the dad remain involved in a significant way. "Every other weekend" kind of thing. To the detriment of the children, sometimes.

I don't want to generalize, but that's a common narrative also. I have no direct experience.

I'm also confident that servers are better off with passwordless SSH, but I know plenty of companies with passworded SSH who respond well to security concerns, and would in all cases be available and sincere in their attempts to prevent their infrastructure from being compromised.

Some times, one way is objectively better than another way. And yes it may be ego-bruising for those doing things the "less good" way, but we don't need to throat-clear so obnoxiously whenever these things are discussed.

I do think you should also take an honest approach to the valuable points Rayiner has made, here and elsewhere. Not everything is correct, but recently it seems like you're just jeering and nervously trying to change the subject when actual discussion of the issue would be uncomfortable for certain current orthodoxy.

In this case, American women (and men!) have been told, through the media, their peers, and reinforced through modern corporate culture, that behaving, acting, and expecting things in a certain way will make them happier. But that's not bearing out in reality. So are they being setting up for ego death, when reality doesn't match expectations, if the expectations are wholly unrealistic and perhaps even wrong?

Basically put, i think they're saying something along the lines of: The person that you have common interests with isn't necessarily the person you want to raise a family with. But that's what people are conditioned to focus on, rather than more practical things

Yes, the part where having unrealistic expectations of a partner can lead the end of a relationship is coherent, if obvious, The part where the women is left raising a child alone is neither.

It should also be obvious that maintaining two households is significantly more expensive than one. So excepting the cases where both parties reconstitute a household, these folks are on average poorer than their married counterparts in societies with minimal divorce. Further, the rate of failure to pay full child support in the US is high, like over 50%.

In Bangladesh, parents select men (90% of marriages are arranged) based on earning power/education, family reputation, and looks, in that order. American culture by contrast immerses women in this narrative that what’s important in a man is sense of humor, sensitivity, impulsive romanticism, etc. Indeed, American culture portrays women who prioritize the things that Bangladeshi moms tell their daughters to prioritize quite negatively.

This hurts women in two ways. First it makes them more likely to select shiftless men who will run out in their families to pursue their dreams of being YouTube stars. Second, by setting cultural expectations and incentives, it increases the supply of such men.

I’d recount some of my own experiences here, but since my actual name is connected to this account, I’d rather not. But I have also experienced this first-hand, many times throughout my life.

create a throwaway account?

As a man I also feel repulsed by it, if it's too much. Even when I am being vulnerable, I unconsciously make sure to stay in the "strong because vulnerable and facing hell" zone instead of the "weak and pathetic cry-baby" zone.

Sadly, I've had a similar experience.

I had a friend whose mental health always seemed a little precarious. One time he told me that he'd broken down and just hugged one of his kids and cried.

Intellectually, I knew he deserved pity. But my gut reaction was revulsion at showing such weakness to one of his kids. In retrospect, what most bothered me was probably the inversion of caregiving burden between a parent and a young child.

> I'm retrospect, what most bothered me was probably the inversion of caregiving burden between a parent and a young child.

Sorry for going off-thread a little, as I appreciate the subject here is men experiencing negative behaviours when showing vulnerability.

But I wrote about the issue of "inversion of caregiving" (good compact phrase) in Digital Vegan in respect to technology.

It's become perfectly acceptable for parents/adults to lionise the supposed skills of children around tech. They say things like: "Oh well kids just instinctively know about technology don't they", or feel perfectly happy recounting with a laugh how "My five year old has to show me how to use the TV remote".

If adults are too lazy or stupid to understand any technology and its attendant risks, handing it to children under their care is neglect.

I think this is part of a wider problem of shrugging abdication of agency under condition of "convenience" worship.

I think it's possible to be proud of your children for adapting to modern interfaces more quickly and easily than you, while simultaneously remaining cautious about risks those technologies can present. I don't think the straw-parent in your example needs to know how to work the remote (or the computer) to understand most of the important risks, e.g. of unmoderated content consumption. I'm pretty sure it's still unacceptable in most spheres for parents to admit no boundaries or limitations to TV or internet usage, especially conditioned on age or subject matter.

Understanding the technology and understanding its attendant risks aren't completely orthogonal, but neither does one imply the other - or else the kids who "instinctively know about technology" would also instinctively know the risks. On the other hand, it's probably faster and easier for someone who understands the technology to learn about the attendant risks, and understanding the technology may be required to personally validate the risks or to invent the best remediation strategies. But a considerable amount of parenting is, and always has been, received wisdom, for better or worse. I can see an argument to describe "lazy" as neglectful, but I take issue with "stupid": the scope of a parent's best reasonable effort to understand and mitigate technological risks for their children should be conditioned on what level of understanding they can realistically achieve, or else "neglect" is reduced to an IQ test.

Thanks for your thoughtful reply.

It is possible to be simultaneously cautious and proud of one's children for quick adaptation, but it is far from common. In fact it's rare in my observation, and the pride is misplaced.

These "straw parents" are very real and embodied. I talk to them often through Digital Self Defence classes and have a first hand feel for their struggles (while also being a parent myself).

> Understanding the technology and understanding its attendant risks aren't [s] completely orthogonal, but neither does one imply the other

This is a very interesting point you make. My opinion is that they are very much orthogonal right now, and that is a major problem. Much of what passes for "understanding" is shallow marketing hype, at best dangerously incomplete, but more typically misleading, deception and propaganda. I quite agree with comedian Stuart Lee's assessment of Vodafone's guide to online child safety as "Mr. Fox's Guide to Hen-house Security".

We are in desperate need of a renaissance in digital literacy. I have called for Digital Literacy 2.0 as a movement to repair much of the cavalier and avoidant half-arsed education around technology these past 30 years.

Despite the likelihood that the implementation will be a shitshow - regressive for many necessary forms of speech to challenge technofascism - in the UK our "Online Safety Bill" contains much good stuff in the margins and has my broad support.

I get the sense that you are neither defending bad technology nor bad parenting. But together these the things feed off each other - and the results are self-evident in depressed, suicidal, distracted states of anxious acedia and nihilism so many children suffer today, along with the frustration and confusion of parents who feel their children "need" to engage in technologies and habits that are clearly harmful to them.

EDIT: My main point stands though - that ot is unacceptable for parents to transfer the burden of responsibility to their children. That is neglect, however you frame the abilities and knowledge of the parties.

respects

Do you know why you are repulsed, if I may ask? We have completely different ways to tackle this, apparently! :D

I'm like you, totally stoic. But if one of my mates has problems or is obviously in a dark place and wants to talk, it doesn't bother me at all, even if it is a, from my perspective, petty reason - we're humans and not rational machines, after all.

Well it's a spectrum.

If someone's opening up about something truly traumatic or difficult, they get all my attention and respect.

But if I feel like they're being a cry-baby (e.g. being hurt by words rather than their meaning, complaining with a plank in their eye, complaining without making efforts, being dramatic over a small difficulty/fear/etc., not pushing their limits, etc.) I cannot but feel repulsed.

Edit: as for the why, I guess because as men I think we should always strive to improve, face the abyss, and overcome dragons on a frequent basis. If someone cannot overcome the tiniest of dragon eggs, they seem weak and not worth my time. It's the antithesis of someone I want to emulate or associate with.

This is 100% accurate in my experience. It is good to know that others have also experienced this. At least the more old-fashioned women are honest about their needs. The feminist type pretends to like sensitive men but is disgusted when they open up. If you're a straight man you should never open up to your SO (easier said than done of course).

This is too simplistic. Life is better when you can open up, and there are women who welcome it for real and not just with words.

The hard part is that it's something you can only really learn about your partner with certainty once it really matters.

So in a way it's actually better to open up early, when the cost of being disappointed isn't too high yet.

Also have experienced it first hand. Show real emotion and they immediately start to distance themselves, and stop talking, and physically move away from you.

As someone who divorced last year and is now in a relationship with a wonderful woman who identifies as a feminist: not all women are like this.

I’ve been open and emotional on multiple occasions with my partner, including to the point of crying. I’m open about my doubts, flaws, and weaknesses. It hasn’t diminished her desire or commitment in the slightest.

And if it did, I’d much rather lose her than lose myself like I did in my marriage.

Living your life behind a mask to earn the approval of someone else is the path to the life of “quiet desperation” that Thoreau wrote about. You’ll never feel loved and accepted for who you are, because you won’t have truly revealed yourself.

Why be with someone if you can’t be truly known by them?

After reading the replies I believe this dynamic is real, but from my own opposite experiences, not universal. I asked my feminist wife about this and she said the reason she isn't put off by vulnerable men is partly because her father was a sensitive man and traditional gender roles were not enforced by her mother either. And that feminists are not immune to the pathriarchy.

So I think this reaction can change but it will take time.

Did you read the article? It's about social/educational/economic programs that have profound impact for women but little to no impact for men. Programs that include both men and women, but where men aren't seeing any real improvements from them. It discusses men and women both having the same opportunities, but men are not seizing them like women are, due to what is cited as a lack of drive/ambition/motivation. It mentions that research into understanding this gender gap is not being done, but is paramount for effective program and policy design, and that continuing to spend money on these programs that don't work for half of the population is irresponsible.

I don't know if I see the connection to emotional vulnerability in a romantic relationship.

> Because men are bullied when they ask for it. This is what Brene Brown found:

>> Here’s the painful pattern that emerged from my research with men: We ask them to be vulnerable, we beg them to let us in, and we plead with them to tell us when they’re afraid, but the truth is that most women can’t stomach it. In those moments when real vulnerability happens in men, most of us recoil with fear and that fear manifests as everything from disappointment to disgust.

How is that relevant? Supposedly men are not good at asking for and receiving help because of their traditional gender role.

I have experienced this all too well.

You have to be an extraordinary man to have an ordinary life these days.

Women are like rats, first to flee a sinking ship. A man needs male friends, counting on your spouse to be your support system is the biggest mistake man can make.

the problem is that not being able to ask for help also makes finding this kind of friends that can be your support system very difficult. so i have to disagree. i need my partner to be my support system, and i want to be hers.

it is still good to have friends, but for me this is the definition of an ideal relationship. a fortress of well-being where both partners support each other.

My mom is filing for divorce right now and my dad has been entirely financially dependent on her for the past 30 years. He was a homemaker, after all. I have been reflecting on this exact thought (specifically, women are not "loyal" and will abandon a partner that doesn't produce income or has some other shortcoming much more readily than men will). I used the "rats fleeing a sinking ship" metaphor when talking about it with my wife the other day.

That isn't to say I don't think they should be divorced. It's just what's on my mind.

So don't be a sinking ship.

Tell me that you're a woman without telling me that you're a woman :)

Haha, man here. See other comments.

Chiming in on a throwaway account to confirm that this behavior toward men who've shown vulnerability is 100% not limited to current or potential romantic partners and may be displayed by supposed friends and family. People you've known for years, maybe for nearly your whole life, can turn and treat you as worthless human trash for having shown yourself to be "less of a man". Maybe they cut you off as a friend. Maybe they fail to call 911 when you need medical attention, neglect you after major surgery, and then gaslight you about it while still making sure to remind you how worthless you are. And people wonder how toxic masculinity perpetuates.

Bingo. “Ask for help” and get ignored at best, or stigmatized at worse.

Exactly this. Specifically in the U.S. we have a self righteous moralist problem. People say words about how they want equality. In action they're just following discriminatory culture all the same.

It's not new, it's influenced from American Christian culture where the social perception of individuals is more important than the truth. The perception of holiness to buy ones way.

In reality the overwhelming majority of those that say it's "okay" for men to be vulnerable and emotional will react negatively when it happens.

Unfortunately that in itself is an unacceptable opinion by the moralist because it paints woman in a poor light. Again, caring about perceptions, not the truth. In truth its universal, woman+man relationships just happen to be the majority.

It happens in all other forms. It's something about the power dynamic of relationships.

> It's not new, it's influenced from American Christian culture where the social perception of individuals is more important than the truth.

This isn't a uniquely Christian thing, and it's definitely not something that suddenly popped up in the last century. Here's Jesus rebuking the 1st century jews for this exact behavior:

“And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward." Matthew 6:5 ESV

I think this is more of a "human" problem than a uniquely Christian problem.

The only way I can read that that makes sense is to say that "American Christian" is used to distinguish from actual Christianity. Because indeed, the Bible is extremely explicit, repeatedly and at considerable length, that appearances are either irrelevant or inversely correlated with things that actually matter.

Lots of people in this discussion are misunderstanding what is happening here with this dynamic where men "finally have the courage to be vulnerable" but are then immediately seen as unattractive.

It's not the vulnerability itself that is the problem- it's that the vulnerability is revealing what is perceived as a huge character flaw: emotional weakness. When guys are admitting that they feel afraid, helpless, scared, etc. it's demonstrating that they are lacking strength, courage, and emotional maturity to deal with hardships constructively. They probably really are lacking these things, and the women didn't realize it before because they kept silent.

Ironically, vulnerability is actually one thing women find most attractive in men, as explained in Mark Manson's book models- it is really an impressive and attractive thing when done properly, it shows that you aren't afraid of the woman's rejection.

However, to be attractively vulnerable you also need to be strong, brave, and emotionally mature. You can't really fake this, it comes from hard work and life experience. It takes a lot of work and time for most people, and yes, crying over little things might be a valuable first step in being aware of your own emotions and starting to work on these issues.

What women are looking for in a vulnerable man, is a man that has overcome some really difficult stuff, and is tough and stable as nails in the face of adversity. He might be upset about something, and share that, but he also has a plan for what he is going to do about it. He isn't much afraid of her, or of sharing his inner feelings and challenges, because he has a lifelong habit of directly facing his fears in a courageous way with circumstances much more difficult.

I do share my inner challenges and feelings with my girlfriend, and she finds it attractive. I have also been through some really terrible shit in my life, and always have that in mind that the current challenge is tiny in comparison, and something that will make me even stronger once I overcome it. I also plan to fix the problem myself, and let her know that I have such a plan.

Vulnerability revels inner truths about a person. Are those truths about you attractive or unattractive? If your inner truths are unattractive is that her fault or yours?

goes well with the primitive reactions at the apparent foundation of seduction (something I don't like btw)

good old triggers are more potent than any progressist concept that popped up in the last century

Strongly disagree. Very dangerous conclusion to draw. There is a difference between vulnerability and being “a rock”. Being “a rock” is helpful in terms of being reliable and safe. But repressing emotions and giving the impression that you always are in control is what eventually kills many marriages.

Yeah I definitely remember the "i didn't marry an emotional man" talk from my wife.

I agree

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I think it is more that many men don't consider the benefits worth the effort. Plenty of men are happy living in an old building playing video games all day. Don't need a lot of money for that.

They need a better reward than just a nicer career to consider it worth it.

Honestly fellow throwaway, that sounds pretty nice.

Admittedly, if I end up never having a relationship/family, I could walk away from anything intense in 5-10 years pretty easily.

“Don’t Worry Darling” screams this out loud.

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